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Ford is launching a project to help its commercial customers switch to electric vehicles by selling them EV charging installation equipment and software management tools.
Over 300,000 electric vehicles are expected to be sold to businesses and government agencies over the next decade. Ford is launching a new project called Ford Pro Charging, which will offer the necessary software and hardware to aid in the charging of their electric vehicles.
Fleet owners will be able to keep an eye on their vehicles with the help of Ford's telematics software. Commercial fleet operators will be able to figure out when and where to charge their EV with the help of this software. If a customer uses an electric Ford F-150 Lighting Pro truck to tow materials, they may end up using more battery power than a Ford E-Transit van used for deliveries, and therefore need to charge more frequently.
Over 300,000 electric vehicles are expected to be sold to businesses and government agencies over the next decade.
Some of the more unconventional issues that might crop up as operators switch to electric vehicles will be helped by Ford's fleet software. Some workers fill up their own gas tanks and get reimbursed by their employer, if they take their fleet vehicles home at night. Ford will help employers reimburse workers for the cost of at- home charging by writing into the fleet software a way to do that.
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Muffi Ghadiali, head of Ford Pro Charging, said that the customer fleet would return around 10PM and go back out at 5AM. There is a limited window for charging and you have to make charging decisions in a highly dynamic environment. Is every vehicle fully charged? Can we take advantage of low overnight energy rates by charging power against the available charging window? Ford Pro Charging accounts for a number of variables and controls each charge station precisely to maximize energy costs and ensure vehicle uptime.
Ford will be able to count on subscription fees as recurring revenue if they subscribe to the company's software platform. The amount that each customer pays is based on a number of variables, including the number of vehicles or charge ports they have in operation.
Ford will help install charging stations at customers homes or depots for fleet vehicles. Depending on the customer's needs, the company will install either AC or DC fast charging ports. Ford said it is working with a number of different suppliers, but a spokesman wouldn't give any charging company names.
Ford wouldn't say how much money it plans on spending on this project. The company said it would spend $29 billion on electric and self-drive vehicles. The F-150 Lightning Pro, an electric pickup truck geared toward commercial customers, and the E-Transit van are expected to be shipped by the year 2022.
Over the next decade, the demand for commercial EV is likely to be huge. The federal government is likely to spend billions of dollars buying electric vehicles in order to achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2050.
EV charging has been a challenge for the entire auto industry. The FordPass network claimed that EV owners would have access to 12,000 public charging stations. The branding made it seem as if Ford was launching its own version of the Supercharger network, when it was actually tapping existing stations from companies like Electrify America. The company stopped selling Level 2 home charging for the Mach-E after discovering some weren't working.
